5~7~01
The Best Party in Thailand
Part One
The high point of our mediocre stay on the island resort of Ko Samui was the full moon party we attended on nearby Ko Pha Ngan. This party occurs every month (as you might expect) on the night of the full moon and lasts until dawn.Realizing we can't stay up all night anymore without help, Steve and I stocked up on caffeine before the journey. We were picked up, fittingly, by a pickup truck, which packed in passengers before driving to the speedboat jetty. After a fifteen-minute delay cleverly engineered so our group could buy beer from the affiliated shop, we embarked on a twenty-minute speedboat ride across choppy water. The boat was so fast that each wave hit with quite a jolt and by the end of the ride, everyone was quite relieved to arrive. Sunrise Beach, the setting for the party, has no jetty, so our group jumped off into thigh-deep water one at a time and waded ashore. I was glad I wasn't wearing pants!
We had seen the lights of the beach from quite a distance, and they now spread out in front of us, revealing maybe fifteen bars along a mile-long strip of beach. Each bar offered its own brand of loud, thumping music and colorful, flashing lights. Here and there along the sand, vendors manned food stalls selling things like pizza and phad thai.
The crowd was large - several thousand people - and varied. We had expected either hippies (due to the party's reputation) or frat-boy types (due to our fellow speedboat passengers), but the crowd was that and a lot more. All kinds of people filled the beach, doing their own thing. Many were in costume or barely clothed at all. Lots of people sported face and body paint. We found a myriad of categories represented: male, female, Western, Thai, straight, gay, old, young.
We spent the night mostly walking up and down the beach, stopping to dance when the music caught our fancy. Sometimes we cooled down and sat, people-watching, on the bamboo mats which had been placed on the sand by some of the bars. It was a lovely, warm night, enhanced by the glow of the full moon.
Just before dawn, we decided we were tired, and caught a speedboat back. It was a nervewracking trip, involving the same jarring bumps and much more drunk passengers. I spent the whole ride nervously eyeing a guy sitting across from me who looked awfully nauseous. Fortunately, we made it back without any vomitous incidents, and piled in the back of a pickup for our ride back to the hotel.
Before going to sleep, we walked to the beach and stood on the water's edge to watch the moon set and the sun rise. It was a gorgeous finale to a long, fun night. 
Watching the sun rise
But that wasn't the best party in Thailand...
